Republican Rep. Mike Waltz has introduced a resolution urging the U.S. to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing if they are not moved, saying the U.S. "cannot in good conscience" have American athletes celebrating an event hosted by "a brutal dictatorship" and warning that China's Communist Party would be "emboldened by the legitimacy conferred by the Olympics."
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., earlier the month also introduced a resolution in the Senate, calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics out of China and rebid it to another country unless Beijing "immediately addresses its egregious and numerous violations of human rights." Scott has been calling for the IOC to move the games from Beijing for over a year.
"Think about what we've gone through in the last year as a country – what it is doing to our children, to our elderly, to our families in terms of the coronavirus," Waltz told Fox News, saying it is "indisputable at this point that the Chinese Communist Party covered" the virus up.
"So you have that, on top of, what is increasingly coming to light a genocide – forced labor, internment," Waltz continued. "To see the American flag and to see American athletes in Beijing celebrating what is the worst of the worst authoritarian regimes right now – I can’t imagine it."
"It makes me sick to think of the Olympics – in just 11 months – being celebrated in Beijing after all of that."
Waltz added that his resolution is "focused on the CCP." "There is no issue with the amazing culture and long history of the Chinese people. They are being brutalized by the Chinese government."
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